


Genoa's Ghost

by Spazzo47



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Newsroom Fanfiction Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26472319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spazzo47/pseuds/Spazzo47
Summary: For Lilac Mermaid's July 2016 fan fiction Challenge -- Remove a character.What happens if instead of Neal buying an air gapped computer to download thousands of documents about Kundu, the docs show up in Don's office?  While no one spends the season in a country without an extradition agreement and no one goes to jail, it's not smooth sailing for our favorite journalists.
Relationships: Don Keefer/Sloan Sabbith, Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale
Comments: 9
Kudos: 11





	Genoa's Ghost

“Hey Tom, can I call you back?” Don hung up the phone without waiting for a response while looking out his office door. “Jenna, I don’t remember ordering anything that big.”

“It’s addressed to you and says your eyes only.”

Don walked around his desk and examined the stack of boxes someone from the mailroom put in the room. “I got three more like this. They okay over here?”

Don opened the first box and started flipping through its contents. “Ah, sure.” As the man left he said, “Actually, can you put them against that wall over there for me? More out of the way.”

The man shrugged his shoulders and left. 

Jenna looked at Don as perplexed as he felt. “Any idea what this is?”

Don shook his head. “Looks like someone wants to give me a story.”

An hour later, Don still hadn’t made it out of the first box when Elliot arrived. “I was thinking. Will has that –”

Don put his finger up. “Just a second.” He finished reading the file in his hand. 

Elliot asked slowly, “What’s going on? What are all these boxes?”

“Have you ever heard of Kundu?”

“The Paupan name for a drum?”

Don shook his head as he closed the file and got out of his chair to leave the office with Elliot following behind. “It’s a country. It’s a country where we did very bad things.”

“A country? I thought it was made up for that show about the White House.”

Don glared for a second at his anchor, then took off as fast as he could. “I gotta talk to Mac.”

Elliot realized his EP dismissed him and stood stunned for a second. “What about my idea?”

Sloane approached him from the opposite direction. “You can tell me. It’s almost just like talking to Don.”

Don ran down the arc of the stairs that separated the offices of the flagship staff from the mere mortals of every other time slot at ACN and found Mac talking to two of the producers she poached from him. He didn’t have the patience to wait his turn so he tapped her on the shoulder, “Mac, Mac, Mac, we gotta talk, right now.”

“Ok, Don I’ll be right with you.”

He put his arm around her shoulder and turning her said, “this can’t wait. Sorry Glen, Mary.”

As he walked her toward her office Tess walked past. “You better not let Sloane see that.”

Don couldn’t comprehend what the woman said and kept walking. When they got to her office, he closed the door and started pacing. “Kundu, Mac. I just got, I don’t know how many boxes of printouts about something that happened in Kundu. It’s all there. Classified documents about a coverup.”

Mac stopped him. “Don, calm down, calm down.” Having his attention, Mac said, “Take a breath. Now start from the beginning.”

Don thought for a second. “I’m currently in possession of, I don’t know, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of stolen government documents, some of which are classified.” 

“Oh, not this again.”

“You can have experts authenticate, but I called a friend and, they’re real. This isn’t Genoa.”

Mac leaned back against her desk, staying quiet to give him a chance to continue before passing judgment.

Don took another deep breath. “There’s a PR firm in Virginia called BCD. They do contract work for SOCOM.”

“Propoganda?”

“Hearts and minds. Yeah. They get stories in newspapers abut American soldiers doing community outreach, but it can go higher than that. They’re helping King Abdullah stay in power in Jordan. A growing pro-democracy rebellion in Kundu threatens stability in a region that includes American interests including national security. To undermine the movement, BCD puts false stories in the local press claiming that a rebel leader was about to wage war on another rebel group. Those false stories caused a riot last week that killed 38 people including three Americans.”

Mac considered the story carefully and studied Don. “Wow! And you’re sure about this?”

Seeing Mac’s reaction, or maybe hearing himself say it, he was more sure than ever. He had a big story, a big juicy story of a coverup. It’s just the thing that Mac lives to cover. And she wouldn’t mind him taking the lead this time since the source trusted him with it. He had something that would put he and Elliot, maybe not on the same plane as Will and Mac, but something huge they can take the lead on. “Absolutely. I looked at the return address and recognized a code I used with an old source that I haven’t heard from in years. He’s high up in the government.”

‘Were you able to call this person, see why he would give this story to a network that is fourth in the ratings in part because we don’t have the trust of the people.”

Don’s head jerked up in surprise. “Will, is fourth in his time slot. The network overall –”

“Goes the direction of Will. Don’t you remember what we – Will, Charlie and I – fought for all those months? We tried to resign because we didn’t want to chain the rest of you with Genoa, we wanted you to have a chance to do what we taught you.”

“I’m a little confused Mac, I thought you taught us to cover the news even if the government doesn’t like it. We are to tell the truth, no matter how good or bad it is, we don’t walk away from it.”

Mac stood silent for a second, thinking. “We can’t afford another Genoa. I can’t put Will up in front of the nation again to tell a sensational story of coverups and wrong doing that will make sources stop talking to us. I can’t let him take the fall, again, because I want to cover something.”

“Will? This is my story, Mac. He, the source sent it to me. The boxes say _my_ eyes only. This story is going on air and it’s not Will that will cover it or you that will run it. There are more journalists than the two of you in this building.”

Don charged towards the door to get out of her office, but she intercepted him. “Where are you going?”

Don turned to face her. “You don’t get to choose what stories are run on _Right Now_.”

“And you don’t get to singlehandedly decide to run a story that will have repercussions for the entire network.”

“Well you don’t either. Charlie gets to make that decision. I thought with all your sanctimonious bullshit about the purpose of journalism you would come with me, but I don’t need you there.” Don flung the office door open and charged out, almost running over Will who only had 3 steps before arriving at her office.

Will poked his head in to look around before finding Mac sitting deflated at her desk. “Mac? Honey? What was that about?”

“Have I gotten scared?”

“Well you do have to sleep with a nightlight on, but I’ve gotten used to it.”

Mac looked at her fiancé quizzically. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I have no idea. Why was Don here?”

Mac started biting her lip. “He got a delivery of thousands of documents about a coverup and a power struggle. All the things that, if it’s true, we have to report. That’s our mandate, to tell the stories that inform the electorate. Let them know the truth of their world and government. It’s the kind of story I got into journalism to tell.”

“But after Genoa, you’re a little gun shy.”

“Don isn’t Jerry, and I know that. He wouldn’t cook an interview. He would tell the truth of the story. But he had that look, Will. Remember when Jerry was looking for anything that would prove Genoa.”

“You kept me out for the Red Team, remember?” Will saw Mac sadly shake her head in agreement, so he turned her toward him so he could look her in the eye. “And it was the right call. So, I don’t know what Jerry looked like. But I know that Don is ambitious. He usually hides it pretty well, but he knows that he gave up the flagship, so he could be on two hours later. He wanted to take Elliot to 8 because he thought I was a sinking ship.”

“How far do you think he would go to serve that ambition?”

“I went soft to get an audience. I don’t know what he would do.” Will looked at Mac and played with her fingers. “Do you want to get some lunch?”

Mac shook her head. “You go ahead. If Charlie doesn’t talk some sense into him, I want another chance.”

Will nodded his head slowly. “Are you sure not following the story makes the most sense?”

“We can’t take another chance like that, Will. We can’t.”

“What if I looked, make a decision based on what’s there.”

Mac considered the idea and finally nodded her head. 

**--**--**--**

Charlie sat back in his chair while Don finished explaining the story. Finally, he stood up and poured them each a drink. “Have you told Mac about this?”

“Why would I have to? She’s not the final authority on my show.”

“But if we run it, Will would cover it, which puts it in her show.”

Don felt a wave of anger that he never had before. “This is _my_ story. It came to _me_.”

“I know that.”

“The source trusted _me_ to tell this story, not her. Why are we even talking about this? Do you think it’s a good story or not? Can we investigate this or not?”

Charlie finished the drink in his hand and poured himself another. “Is it a good story? It sounds like it. But remember, I trusted a source who gave me information that I put on the air.”

“But you can trust him. I’ve known him for almost a decade.”

“I knew Shep for twice that.” Charlie looked at Don with compassion. “Don, you’re a good newsman. Almost as good as I was at your age. But you can’t do this by yourself. You need to have buy in from the team, and that’s going to be a hard sell.”

“They all bought into Mac’s story.”

“That was Jerry’s story. She wanted to pull it until he came up with the first piece of evidence that we could take to air, and even then she wasn’t completely sold. Everyone else had to be convinced one at a time. And only after the _entire_ team signed off, did the story go to air. And it was Will, Mac and me that ultimately had to take the consequences.”

Don immediately answered, “we were going to go too.”

“No, you wouldn’t have and even if you did, it wouldn’t be the same for you.”

Don gave a humorless laugh. “I was just following orders.” He looked seriously at Charlie. “Maybe I’m done being stuck in her shadow. You know that Charlie. Maybe I want a position where what I think actually means something.”

Don turned around to leave. Charlie yelled after him, “Consider what you’re going to do carefully. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Don left Charlie’s office and went back to his own, steaming. He wondered what the fuck he has to do to get heard. If he didn’t leave Will’s show, he would make the decision about this and every other story the network ran. He’s got the fucking experience and degrees and he’s treated like the dunce in the classroom. Why the fuck doesn’t he get the respect he deserves? Because he doesn’t sleep with Will, who will always side with her. Hell, even when he didn’t like Mackenzie, he sided with her. What does she have that Don doesn’t, besides a nice rack.

When he made it to his office, he slammed the door closed and looked at the boxes that lined his wall. He thought about emptying them and refilling with his stuff. He didn’t need to take this shit anymore. He could go to another network that will respect him. But he realized that he wanted to take the files with him, Lilly didn’t give a shit which network reported it, she wanted the story told. And she trusted him to tell it. 

He found an empty box in his office and started filling it when he heard a knock on his door and Sloane walk in. “Have you ever thought about –” He never learned what he never thought about because she stopped and looked horrified. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m getting out of here. And you should think about it too.”

Sloane took a look around the room and said, “Why?”

“Why am I leaving? Because the only person whose opinion matters here is a British woman who has to do math on her fingers.”

“Still need context.” She looked over at the boxes stacked against the far wall. “What’s with the mail drop?”

“It’s a huge story. It’s everything Genoa could have been if Genoa was true. And we can’t do it because Her Royal Highness went soft.”

“Well she’s not a queen. I don’t think she gets any title for being the daughter of an ambassador. Unless that’s what an Earl or an… Earless is. I’m not sure how they get their titles. And I assume everyone in the monarchy are inbreeds. Did she really say that you can’t pursue this story? That doesn’t sound like Mackenzie.”

“Well it is what she said. And what Charlie said. You know, I supported Genoa. I didn’t like it, but I at least listened to the presentation and green lit it.”

Sloane shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.”

“I gave her story the benefit of the doubt. But she won’t let me take the lead on a story just as big. And if she did let me do it, it would be her and Will covering it, not me and Elliot.”

“Well he was the most trusted anchor on the network, even after all the women and the Northwestern disaster. You know, maybe Elliot should be considered more trustworthy.”

“How’d she do it, Sloane? She just came in here one day and completely usurped me. I sat in the newsroom and watched the news, I wasn’t part of it. Even when he couldn’t trust her, he trusted her. And since then I’ve been a second-class citizen.”

Sloane went to his desk and started picking up some things to put in the box. “That is a puzzle. I’m sure it has nothing to do with their previous professional relationship. Or that she has a sense about what will be a good story. Or the two Pulitzers. Or that she knows how to get the best out of him. So, I guess I understand why you feel put out. It really is un believable that she would have that kind of power.”

Don sat in his chair, contemplating her words. “So, what am I supposed to do?”

“Give her the story she can’t refuse. Have a consultant take an unbiased look and report what he finds. Convince her we have to do this story.”

“And what if she doesn’t want to do it?”

“Then I’ll go Tonya Harding on her.”

A smile crept on Don’s face and it turned into a laugh. “Does that make me Jeff Gillooly?”

“Who? I thought John Wayne Bobbitt attacked her.”

Don didn’t know if she was intentionally mixing up crime victims, but he appreciated it. “No, Bobbitt had something worse happen to him.”

Sloane looked at Don and smiled. Before she left, she looked over her shoulder. “Get to work.”

And he did. He called Jim’s consultant, Mike Tapley to look into the facts of the case, find unclassified information that they could show on the air. He conducted interviews and did the legwork himself to ensure that the story was air tight. He got into several battle of words with Lilly who never thought he worked fast enough. But in a month, he made a presentation with Elliot and Sloane showing the story and the evidence of it for Will, Mac and Charlie.

Mac and Charlie looked at each other before saying anything. Mac was first to speak. “It’s a compelling story, and I trust you, all three of you completely.”

“Mac, if you didn’t get burned by Genoa, what would you say to this?”

Mac looked at her fiancé. “But I was. And I can’t sacrifice everything—”

“I seem to remember someone telling me that if it’s a good story, it’s a good story. And the public has the right to know. We have a duty to hold the government accountable.”

“Aren’t you afraid of what happens if –”

Will smiled at her. “No. I’m not. I don’t do this for the ratings. I don’t give a fuck if the White House or the DOJ or anyone else likes me. I want to tell the truth on my show, no matter the cost.” Will looked at the _Right Now_ team and said, “I vote yes.”

Charlie looked at his team, feeling a pride that he rarely felt. “I vote yes.”

Don looked at Mac, who still looked on the fence. “It’s a good story, Mac. No shot clocks, no crazy generals. It’s a good story.”

Mac slowly nodded her head. “It is. I think that Will has to be part of breaking it. Can we figure out how to let he and Elliot co-anchor?”

Don nodded his head. Will would still take the bullet, but there really wasn’t a way around that. But he found he could live with it. 

Charlie said, “How long will it take to get it on the air? We need to try to beat the new management.”

Sloane smiled. “It might make it harder for someone to buy us out.”

**Author's Note:**

> The dialog in the scene when Don explains the Kundu incident comes directly from the rooftop scene in the season 3 premiere. I may have messed with a line, but the dialog absolutely belongs to Sorkin.


End file.
